Introduced in 1956, the Bendix G-15 was a very popular, mid-sized engineering computer. Its main memory was a rotating magnetic drum, storing both program and data. It was relatively inexpensive and Bendix sold over 400 G-15s before Control Data Corporation (CDC) took over Bendix in 1963.

Designer Harry Huskey had previously worked with computer pioneers Alan Turing and John von Neumann and contributed to a variety of early projects including the ENIAC, the Pilot-ACE, the SWAC, and the UC Berkeley Timesharing Computer.